The Environmental Protection Agency has reportedly barred three agency scientists from giving talks about climate change at a conference in Rhode Island days before they were scheduled to speak.

The researchers were booked to appear Monday in Providence at the State of the Narragansett Bay and Watershed workshop, an event highlighting the health of New England’s largest estuary, where temperatures have risen 3 degrees Fahrenheit and water has risen up to seven inches over the past century.

The New York Times first reported the news on Sunday. EPA spokesman John Konkus, a former Trump campaign operative in Florida, provided an emailed statement to The Washington Post and The Hill confirming the cancellations: “EPA scientists are attending, they simply are not presenting, it is not an EPA conference.”

Konkus did not respond to an email and text message from HuffPost on Sunday evening.